


We Do What We Have To.

by Finalgirl



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst and Humor, BAMF JARVIS, BAMF Pepper, BAMF Phil Coulson, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, POV: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 08:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finalgirl/pseuds/Finalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of what happened between the final battle in Iron Man (the first film) and the press conference the following morning.  Tony's not out of danger yet, which means Pepper still has work to do.  What's more, things have changed permanently between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Do What We Have To.

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place toward the end of Iron Man 1, between the final battle and the press conference next morning. I always wondered what happened during that time, so I thought I'd take a crack at it. I hope you enjoy! This was originally posted in my LiveJournal (different handle), and my thanks go to Acadecian for beta-ing. 
> 
> These characters and their 'verse are not mine, of course, and I'm not gaining any profit from this.

The chaos didn’t stop after the reactor blew. Coughing from the smoke, Pepper ran outside and clambered up the utility staircase to the top of the building. Agent Coulson was already there, as were the other agents with him. Tony lay on the edge of the broken skylight, motionless and without his helmet, as two of the agents tried to get him out of his armor

The gravity of what had happened began to sink it. “Oh, god,” she said quietly, more to herself than to anyone else. “I killed him."

“What?” Coulson said, turning to face her. “No, no, absolutely not, Ms. Potts. He’ll make it.”

“I wasn’t talking about Tony,” she said. She gestured to the other side of the skylight, where two different agents pulled Obediah Stane’s lifeless form from his much larger suit. “I flipped the switch, Agent Coulson,” she continued, the words coming out in a torrent. “I mean, Tony lured him into place---I guess we did it together. I’ve never done anything like that before--I had to--oh, god, I’m gonna have to explain to the police...”

He reached out and put one hand on her shoulder.. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “You did what you had to. And I promise you, you won’t have to talk to the police.”

There were police cars pulling into the parking lot as they spoke.

“I’ll see to that right now.”. Coulson was pulling a badge out of his pocket even as he descended the staircase.

At that moment, Pepper’s cell phone rang. She pulled it out, and the Caller ID read Stark Home. She felt as though ice were forming, breaking up and re-forming all along her spine. The house phone. How?

“H-hello?”

“Hello, Miss Potts!”

She had thought the night couldn’t get any stranger. It was JARVIS.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, ma’am! At the risk of poor timing, I’m going to have to ask you where Mr. Stark is right now.”

“He’s here with me, at the plant. Obie’s dead, there was an explosion.” Now an ambulance was pulling into the parking lot. “They’ll be taking Tony to the hospital.”

“Very good then,” JARVIS said, his tone businesslike. “Mr. Stane managed to disable me when he broke in earlier, but Mr. Stark re-booted me before leaving. He ordered me to call you if I lost contact with the suit. Is the arc reactor still functioning? It’s the original--Mr. Stane stole the one Mr. Stark had been using.”

This news hit Pepper with a jolt. That explained where Obie had gotten the arc reactor that had powered his suit. The implications made her feel sick. 

She couldn’t get any closer to Tony without dodging broken glass, climbing onto the roof, and possibly getting in the way of the EMTS who were currently jogging up the steps with a stretcher; so she stayed where she was. She could see, though, that the arc reactor’s telltale pale blue glow was now only an occasional pulse. Craning her neck, she saw that the newer unit, in Obie’s now-unoccupied suit, lacked even that, having taken much more of the energy that had been released.

"Tony’s is still doing...something. Not much. The explosion kind of fried it along with the suit. The other one’s completely gone.”

“Unfortunate,” JARVIS said, with a surprisingly sympathetic tone. “Fortunately, Mr. Stark had been working on third miniature arc reactor, as a backup. Most of the delicate work was done, so when he had to leave in pursuit of mister Stane, he turned it over to me for completion. He needs for you to come get it and bring it to him. If you leave now, fabrication should be complete before you reach the mansion.”

She got back down the steps as quickly as she could. On the roof, the medics had reached Tony,who was now out of his armor, and were putting him on the stretcher.

“I’m on my way, JARVIS.” Fortunately, Coulson had accompanied her in her own car when leaving the office, having the other agents follow him in the remaining vehicles.

“Very good, ma’am. I’m sure I need’t emphasize the importance of keeping power to the electromagnet.”

“No." She turned on the car and the radio, fiddled with the smartphone dock and then put the phone in it. “There. You’re on speaker.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

Tony was being put in the back of the ambulance now, and Coulson was preparing to get into its cab. He paused as she pulled up alongside him. She noticed that the ambulance looked normal until you looked closely, and saw that it was not labeled for a local jurisdiction.

“Where are you taking him?” she asked, speaking over the noise of the car.

“To the V.A. hospital,” Coulson replied.

“I’ll catch up,” she said. “I have to go back to the mansion to get something. Absolutely have to. He has a-- “ she patted her chest, “there’s a magnet. You’ll see. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Coulson nodded. “Okay then. Here’s my card.” She accepted it as he handed it to her. He had already given it to her once, but she wasn’t sure where it was so she was grateful to have it again. “Call me when you get to the hospital. I’ll have to come meet you.”

She nodded. It occurred to her, though, how little she knew about him, about this shadowy organization and its unmarked ambulance. They could be taking Tony anywhere. Phil Coulson was the only face she had for them, and she had to trust him;

Sirens blazing, the ambulance sped out of the parking lot, followed by Pepper’s car.

Pepper took the freeway out of the city, the quickest way back to the mansion. Her hands were tight on the steering wheel until she got to the edge of town, as she focused on darting through traffic. As she passed the city limits and the road opened up, she let a little of her emotion catch up with her as she bore down on the pedal.

“JARVIS, I need for you to distract me.”

“Very well, ma’am,” he said. “I’m not much of a conversationalist, but I do have access to several audio books which Mr. Stark downloaded.”

Well, that was better than nothing at this point “What are the titles?" Mario Puzo and Cormack McCarthy weren’t exactly her style, especially not right now, after such a violent night. “I’ll take the Neil DeGrasse Tyson,” she said.

The audiobook began to play. Sure enough, Dr. Tyson’s narration was enough to keep her calm, even as she drove as quickly as she safely could.

After about twenty minutes, JARVIS cut in. “The new arc reactor is complete, Ms. Potts,” he said. She was still a little more than five minutes away from the house.

“Good. Can any of the robots pick it up?” she asked.

“Dummy can,” JARVIS replied. She knew this referred to one of the more basic robots in Tony’s workshop, who was occasionally used for fire safety. “He did so earlier tonight.”

“Have him meet me out on the roundabout in front of the house. I think he can get there from the garage.” Any time she could shave off of this mission would be valuable to Tony.

“Yes, ma’am. He’ll be waiting.”

“Thank you.”

It was well over an hour after leaving the Stark Industries factory that Pepper finally got to the local V.A. hospital, with the newest arc reactor safely ensconced in a messenger bag. She called Coulson, and he told her to meet him in the emergency room. 

“How is he?” she asked when she found him.

“Stable and awake,” he said. “But it’s good you're here.” 

He took her hand and led her down several halls, then through several unmarked doors. The familiar, sterile smell of the hospital was there, but nothing to indicate where in the hospital they were.

“Is this area even affiliated with the hospital?” she asked.

“Yes and no,” Coulson replied.

Finally, they reached their destination. In a room with nothing else in it but a heart monitor and a crash cart, Tony rested on a gurney. His back was propped up, but his eyes were closed. He was very still, and looked uncharacteristically pale. One of the agents who had been with Coulson was there, with a woman in scrubs who appeared to be a nurse.

“How were Jarvis’s phone manners?” Tony asked, without opening his eyes. Pepper started. She had thought that perhaps he’d lost consciousness again, or fallen asleep.

“They were just fine.” She pulled the new arc reactor out of her bag. “I swear, Tony, I didn’t think anything could be stranger than helping change this thing out last time. But talking to JARVIS on the phone came close.”

Pepper handed him the new arc reactor--she was one of the few people who got away with handing him anything--and he set it down next to him. Pepper noticed Coulson looking away as Tony lifted his shirt to switch the reactors out. At first she thought it was out of some extreme sense of modesty, but the slightly chalky pallor that the agent took on indicated otherwise. Could Coulson be squeamish? Pepper herself found the arc reactor kind of fascinating and cool. She tried not to examine the reasons for that too closely, but she did.

Tony handed the used-up reactor back to her. “I wanna keep this,” he said. “I’d like it put in another trophy-thing. Please. I’ll pay for it this time.”

The inscribed plate that she’d had put around the device was still there. An emotional sensation uncurled in her belly, as powerful as a blow from a fist, but she’d had herself under too tight control for too long to give into tears now. She just put the old unit in her messenger bag.

The nurse protested as Tony removed the heart monitor leads. “Mr. Stark--”

“I’ll be fine, now,” he said, not raising his voice.

“Okay, have it your way,” she said. “But you’re not going anywhere for at least an hour.”

Pepper had to smirk at that first part. It sounded like the nurse was figuring out how things worked around here.

Coulson cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to bring this up right now,” he said, “but you’re going to have to hold a press conference tomorrow. I can advise you on how to control the spin, but the public can’t know what really happened here tonight.”

“They can’t?” Tony asked.

“No, sir. If you want to continue your work, you don’t want that.”

“Hmm. If you say so.” Pepper recognized his tone as the one he used when he wasn’t entirely convinced of what he was being told.

“The earlier the press conference, the better.” Coulson continued. “How does eleven A.M. sound? We can have cover stories worked out for you by then.”

“Oh, god,” Pepper said. “Is this how it’s going to be now?”

An awkward silence fell across the room. “Can the three of you give us a moment alone?” Tony asked Coulson, the other agent and the nurse.

Pepper would always love Phil Coulson, if only as a friend, for what he did next. He turned to her, searching for confirmation that this was okay with her. She was perfectly safe with Tony, of course, so she gave him a barely perceptible nod and he and his colleague filed out of the room. The nurse pointed to the call button on the wall before she joined them, but this was for Tony’s safety rather than Pepper’s.

“You know,” he said, sitting up on the edge of the gurney after they were gone, “I didn’t think you’d be able to get here as quickly as you did.” 

For someone who hadn’t been expecting her so soon, he’d been awfully calm when she arrived. She didn’t think of him as a fearful or anxious person, but until recently, most of the risks he’d taken had been controlled ones, and most of them regarding business. She’d seen him stay calm in a couple of surprising situations recently, and she wondered again how long he’d been drawing on those reserves, what kind of crises he had faced in Afghanistan. Once again, though, she recoiled internally from that thought.

“Well, what can I say? I’ll forward you any stoplight tickets that get mailed to me. And if it rains before you get home, you may have to repair Dummy...he seemed to be having trouble getting back inside.”

This won a brief smile from him, the first of the evening, which is what she had been going for. “All of that is acceptable,” he said. “To answer your question, though...yes, things have definitely changed. And I won’t blame you if you don’t want to keep working for me.”

Both the surprise and the meaning of his words hit her like a blow to the chest. Her jaw dropped for a second. “Are you...are you saying you want me to quit?”

“No,” he said. “No, no. In fact, I’d be begging you to stay if I thought I had any right to. But I don’t and--oh, wow you really do hate job-hunting.”

She laughed nervously and swiped at the hot tears which suddenly spilled down her face. “I’m sorry.” It came out as whisper. “I just--”

“It’s okay. Coulson told me you were...having a little trouble with what you had to do back at the plant.”

“Yes and no,” she said. It honestly didn’t seem nearly as important as it had earlier. “He gave us no choice, Tony.” Her voice took on a hard edge as she went on. “And besides, he deserved it.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Well, who deserves what is more complicated than I used to think. But yeah, I have to agree with you on all of that. Not the point. The point is, I don’t feel good about you finding yourself in that position. I don’t feel good about sending you to the office earlier, either. Pepper, if I’d had any idea of how dangerous that would be...”

“Ah. I guess Coulson told you what happened there, too.” She had never been more glad to see anyone in her life as when Coulson had shown up there to ferry her away from Obie’s wrath.

He nodded. “Yeah. I thanked him for that so many times I think it got on his nerves.”

She managed a wan smile of her own at this. Nevertheless, she knew that he had realized, at the time, that he might die here at this hospital---and not because she wouldn’t try her hardest, but because it might not be possible to get there in time. Another tear trailed down her cheek.

Tony reached out and took her hand. “If you stay on, I can’t promise that you won’t be in danger again. I just can’t know that for sure. It might be scary--hopefully things won’t be scary in this way,” here he gestured around at the hospital walls, “again.” 

Then he met her gaze with those improbably brown eyes. “I do promise that I’ll do whatever I can to keep you out of danger, and that I’ll never ask you to do anything that might be dangerous again."

Pepper took a deep breath before she spoke. “I don’t regret anything I had to do today, Tony. I’m not going anywhere."

He breathed a sigh of relief, then leaned back against the wall as if deflated. “There, you see? That’s why I couldn’t have the heart monitor. I knew that if we had this talk, it would totally rat me out."

She couldn’t help but giggle. “I think you ratted yourself out just now, actually.”

“Oh, right.” he said. “Oops."

She took his free hand with hers. “I’m serious, though. I’ve been..amazed, in a good way, by...” she searched hard for neutral words, “everything that’s been going on lately. I’m not sure yet what risks I’m willing to take, but I want to help.” She smiled. “I want to be there for whatever happens next.”

It was then that they noticed that they were linked by both hands. They exchanged a look, and let go.

He cleared his throat. “Hopefully you don’t mean that in a ‘train wreck’ sort of way.”

“No. Although you’ll have to admit, I am used to putting out fires. They’re just usually metaphorical.”

“Not always,” he pointed out, as if this somehow made it better.

“Don’t remind me,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Speaking of which, I need to get working on that preliminary statement to the press.”

He shook his head. “Go home. Get some rest. It’s been a long day--Peterson can do it. Isn’t that what we’re paying him for?” He was referring to the company’s press liaison."  
"  
“Well, yes, but it’s after Midnight. I’m awake, he’s probably not, it won’t take--”

“I’ll send someone over to wake him up if I have to,” Tony said. “If it I have to, I’ll write it up myself and have one of Coulson’s people pose as a PR intern.”

“Okay,” Pepper said reluctantly. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay here...you know, just for company?”

He paused. “Tempting.” Something about the choice of that word, or the way he said it, caused a thrill to run across the back of her neck. “But it’s hard to know what all there will be to do, even after they cut me loose. Coulson’s Strategic-whatever-whatever people will get me home.”

“I told him to have them work on that, by the way,” she said.

“Good! You always did have a good sense of brand management.”  
She smiled. “Good night, Tony.”

He leaned forward and hugged her. She was shocked for a second: he almost never did that, usually only as they left for the holidays or if she was under a lot of stress. They hadn’t even embraced when he’d gotten back from Afghanistan--although in fairness, he’d had one arm in a sling. Usually, this would have sent her mind into a tail-spin, into the type of fantasies she normally managed to keep at bay. Right now, it just felt...comforting.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and she understood how much that covered.

She held on for as long as she dared. “I’ll send everyone back in on my way out,” she said as she finally stepped away.

“Sounds good.”

He suddenly looked sad, but Pepper didn’t read too much into it. After all, the large arc reactor had been destroyed, and more importantly, so had a lifetime of trust with Obie. Tony had plenty of reason to be sad, and had to be exhausted on top of it.

She picked her messenger bag back up and headed for the door. “So, if tomorrow’s press conference is at eleven, should I be there around nine?”

“Make it eight-thirty and I’ll bring coffee and donuts.”

“Oh, wow,” she said, “How could I resist?"

“Sleep, well, Potts,” he said, waving her out of the room.

“You too, Mr. Stark.”

Pepper bid goodbye to Coulson on her way out. Once outside, she paused briefly to take a deep breath and look at the starry Malibu sky. The she got in her car and sleepily pointed it toward home. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.


End file.
